Why the summer break has come at the wrong time for Red Bull according to F1 journalist

F1 journalist Tom Clarkson feels that the summer break has come at the wrong time for Red Bull. The Austrian team has won everything since the start of the season and a break this big is certainly going to end up breaking the momentum that the team's had. The 2023 F1 season has had 12 races(with two others getting canceled).

All of them have been won in dominant fashion by Red Bull. There have been a few qualifying sessions where Max Verstappen has lost out to Charles Leclerc(in Baku) and Lewis Hamilton(in Hungary) but more or less the team has dominated the field this season. Talking about the summer break causing a loss of momentum, Tom Clarkson said on the F1 Nation podcast:

"Do you guys believe in momentum? Because I feel the summer break has come at a bad time for Red Bull. I think when you’re on that roll, you just don’t want to stop, do you?

Natalie Pinkham concurred with what Tom had said and added:

"I 100% believe in momentum. I know that Max Verstappen doesn’t, he makes a point of saying that’s a theory he doesn’t concur with. But if you look at Sergio Perez, I think a bad run of form can really bog you down and it’s difficult to break out of that."

"It becomes a mindset. The same can be said for a decent finding [of] the groove. George Russell said at the weekend, ‘Qe just need to find our groove.’ And for me, that is momentum.”

Natalie Pinkham looks at the fight behind Red Bull

Looking at the fight behind Red Bull, Pinkham stressed how most of the action had been going on behind the Austrian team and we could see one of the drivers finding themselves in a position to beat Max Verstappen, she said:

“It could actually be Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin, and that’s what has provided the entertainment this season – there’s so much else going on elsewhere. So we can’t call it, they’ve all had their moments in the sun. It’s who gets it at the right time and whose stars are aligned to topple Max on their day. You know, it could be any one of them.”

Max Verstappen is on the verge of equalling the record for the most consecutive wins in F1. The driver is at 8 wins and will be heading to his home race in Zandvoort hoping to equal Sebastian Vettel and Alberto Ascari's record.